Heroes of the Night
Allison was lying upside down on her bean bag. She was contemplating whether the Borg would make good Sue hunters. Of course they were efficient hunters. Their weakness was however that they assimilated their prey, made the knowledge of the prey part of the collective knowledge. What would happen if the Borg had assimilated a large number of Sues? Would they turn into Sues themselves? What would that do to the integrity of the Star Trek Universe?
A shrill sound came from her computer. Allison tried to ignore it at first, but the computer didn't give up. The agent made a somersault and landed on her feet.
"Let's see what we have here." She walked over to her computer and pressed a few keys. "Her again."
A few weeks earlier Allison had been on her first assignment for the PPC, Protectors of the Plot Continuum. She had gone into a Voyagers! fanfic and taken out the Sue. There was however a sequel to that story, and Allison had assumed taking out a Sue in the first story would render her incapacitated for any sequels. Apparently it did not and Allison got a quick reminder of what it means to assume.
Agent Allison opened up a portal to Heroes of the Night and checked herself for a disguise. She decided to go into the story when the Voyagers were in the Soviet Union, so an appropriate uniform would be needed to merge into the background. She stepped through the portal, straightened out her uniform and looked around where to go. She heard a whoosh sound and a thump. That would be the travelling trio. She rushed over and peered cautiously around the corner into the hall way.
"Moscow?" Jeffrey thought aloud.
"1939?" Cassey did the same.
"No ideas? Come on, Princess. You're the history genius. Think."
History genius, that would be Jeffrey. Since when did Bogg call him princess? Allison thought to herself. Not having a partner pretty much ruled out having witty banter. Unless she started talking to herself, and work pressure hadn't gotten to her that much, yet.
"Well, let's check the guidebook. You do have the guidebook, don't you, Cass?" Bogg's mind flashed on an old idea not called upon for quite some time.
"Yes, right here," Cass retrieved the guidebook from her knapsack-purse and handed it to him.
Allison shook her head lightly. Now where did she get that from? In the last story both items were left in her apartment when she was whisked away into the world of voyaging.
Allison heard the sound of boots running on tiles and looked behind her. A small troupe of guards was approaching. Good, she could join them and get closer to the Voyagers without being noticed as being out of place. The guards surrounded the Voyagers and pointed their weapons at them. Allison looked on from the second row.
With some quick thinking, Cass yelled in a Russian accent, "Stop it, you fools! I told him if we were separated to meet me here at headquarters." This impersonation stopped the guards from pulverizing Bogg any further.
Allison rolled her eyes. She did not seriously believe this would work, did she? The guards seemed to take it in. They questioned her in grammatically correct English, and though it wasn't written, Allison could hear their Russian accents drone in her mind. The power of an imaginative reader.
Cassey managed to convince the guards to bring her to their prisoner. Allison followed as they took her to him and made a mental note to write 'taking charge of the situation' on the charge sheet.
"So, who do you think this spy is?" Jeffrey asked, quietly.
As they arrived at the Englishman's jail cell, Cass said, "Ian Fleming."
Oh, come on. How on earth would you know a thing like that? It was all Allison could do from shouting it out and giving herself away.
"You speak English, " the prisoner approached the cell door in amazement.
What are you being amazed about? The guards apparently speak excellent English too. Many native speakers do worse. Allison suddenly felt that 'talking to oneself' in mind or out loud is only a subtle distinction. She decided she had heard enough from this location. She was about to fast forward when she realized a new location would probably also require a new disguise. Allison opened the portal and stepped back into her office.
-oOo-
Moments later Allison sat in the lounge car of the Moscow Berlin express -- for as much as anything that shook more than a badly loaded spin-drier could be called an express. On her notepad she was writing out the charge sheet and trying to memorize the charges she made up, when she heard a familiar voice approaching the car.
Cass whispered to Bogg, "Phineas, I don't know if I can flirt with this guy. Especially with you right next to me. I hate flirting," she pouted.
Allison sighed: Typical Sue behavior, pouting, and hating the things they're good at. She made another note. She looked around when she heard a drumbeat. Where could that be coming from?
Cass ran her fingers through her long, red wavy hair and shook her tresses about to present the desired sensuous image. She could almost hear the drumbeats that usually accompany any babe entering a room in the movies. Boom, boom-ba-boom, boom-ba-boom. Cassey sauntered as sexily as she could toward the table, and boy did her efforts work. The thief's eyes would not leave the beauty moving nearer and nearer to him.
Allison rolled her eyes. When did the man even notice the redhead walking in? Or had he been distracted by the music too? And did men really get totally preoccupied when some woman walked in showing a little stomach skin? She would have to try that herself sometime.
It was obvious that the thief did not mind Cassey's advances, as his widening grin demonstrated. As a matter of fact, the thief was quite distracted that he almost missed Bogg laying down his winning hand and announcing his "full house."
Cassey was beaming with pride and glanced around the room to hide her smile. She spotted Allison sitting in one of the easy chairs and stiffened. Allison tried to give her one of her most pleasant smiles and got up to leave. Cassey recomposed herself and turned her attention back to the thief. Allison left the compartment and stepped straight into the next location. She looked around the unlit hotel room puzzled for a moment. Then she heard a whistling sound and quickly dove underneath the bed. Not a moment too soon as the Voyagers landed in the room. Allison looked at her watch; she hoped this wasn't going to take too long: she was meeting friends for dinner.
"FREEZE!" The hotel room door flung open with a force that resembled a tornado. A medium-sized, wavy-haired brunette stood blocking the doorway with her firearm drawn and pointed into the room.
Ah, enter the canon Sue. One day PPC should set up a department that also flushed out the Sues put into stories by the original writers. But that was not important to her now. What was important now was how this woman explained her presence and reason for barging into the hotel room.
The woman tucked her weapon back into her holster under the jacket of her navy blue dress suit. "Don't you recognize me? It's me, Jackie. Jackie Knox."
Allison thought about this. Jackie put the gun away the moment she saw two old friends. Immediately she knows she can trust them. To Allison that seemed atypical for someone working for the Secret Service. She herself wouldn't have put the gun away until she knew what the 'old friends' had been doing in a hotel room. How did she even know there was anyone in the hotel room? Why did she burst through the door? Obviously Jackie was still behaving like a Sue. Allison wondered whether this should go on Cassandra's charge list or whether it were actually points in her favour that she kept the canon Sue in character.
"I understand completely. I've helped these guys before. I don't mind helping again," Jackie smiled modestly.
Okay, Allison decided, points in favour for Cassey. So far this story hadn't gotten up her nerves as much as the first one. She looked at her watch again. She wasn't going to wait for the end of things under this bed. That could take hours, at least it took hours in narrated time. Allison opened the portal in the floor, rolled through it and landed neatly on her feet before the door to the hotel library. She heard someone playing the piano in the library.
What am I going to do now that Bogg has a daughter -- the child that I couldn't give him? After not knowing about his daughter for all this time, Phineas deserves to be with her. He's wanted a child of his own, and now he has one. He can't stay with you, Cassey, he needs to be with his family. Oh, Cass, why did you have to fall madly in love with this man?
Allison had heard enough. She went into the library. She locked the door behind her. Cassey looked up.
"What are you doing here?" she asked through her tears. "Haven't you caused enough trouble by killing me once?"
"That depends on your definition of trouble," Allison smirked.
"Okay, go ahead if you must. My life is over as it is. I am going to have to give up the man I love so that he can be with his family." Cassey started to sob again.
Allison sighed and pulled out her notepad to add one more item to the list of charges.
"Why couldn't you have come sooner, like last time, than I could have been spared this sorrow?"
"Yeah, well, I got reprimanded for last time."
"You got reprimanded for killing me?"
"I got reprimanded for killing you too soon, before you had actually made any contact with the canon characters. Back at the office they didn't feel as strongly about intent as I did." Allison moved over to the piano, opened the lid and started to remove one of the strings.
"You can't do that," Cassey exclaimed.
"Yes, I guess it's mean to destroy something someone else spent long and hard to work on," Allison said pensively, "but sometimes it needs to be done. Cassandra Thompson, I hereby charge you with impersonating a Soviet Agent and getting away with it, I charge ..."
"I didn't get away with it," Cassey interrupted. "They caught on to me in the end."
"They should have caught on to you in the beginning. Secondly, I charge you with immediately recognizing Ian Flemming. Thirdly, I charge you with having Ian Fleming as a character but not having him utter a single sexual innuendo. You supposedly sat through ever James Bond movie. Have you ever heard him not make a sexual remark? Scratch that question," Allison said as she realized it would imply James Bond made only sexual remarks, and that was simply not true. "Fourth, being modest and pouting when there is no reason for either. Fifth, for wanting to give up your love in favour of another. How much of a Sue can you be?"
"Wasn't there anything in the story you liked?" Cassey whimpered.
"You had good grammar and punctuation. I should take a leaf from your book on that. But now I want you to take a leave from your book." Allison wound the piano wire around her hands.
"No!" Cassey screamed. She made a run for the door and tried to open it. However, it was locked and Allison had taken the key. Cassey banged on the door and screamed for help. Allison threw the piano wire over her head and pulled it tight. Cassey clawed at the garrote, but to no avail. Soon her body went limp. Allison let her slide on to the floor and checked whether she was really dead. There was a knock at the door.
"Cassey? Are you in here?"
"Sorry," Allison answered. "No one in here by that name."
"Okay, thanks."
Allison heard the person turn around and walk away. She looked down at the body on the floor.
"Now, what to do with you?"